Pleasure, Beauty Standards, and Social Change | Marilyn Minter
In the inaugural episode of The Art Career, Emily McElwreath interviews world renowned artist and activist, Marilyn Minter. Find the podcast episode on Anchor.fm
Marilyn Minter in her studio. New York, NY. Image courtesy of the Artist, LGDR, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin, Asia.
Marilyn Minter’s paintings, photographs, prints, and videos investigate how the beauty industry expertly creates and manipulates desire, beauty standards, and pleasure through images. In our inaugural episode, Marilyn shares how she paved various roads in the arts that instill social change.
Marilyn often depicts the female body in a variety of ways—from up-close views of women’s feet in heels and eyeshadow-covered eyelids to more explicit sexual imagery involving drool, sweat, cum, drips, and more.
Marilyn Minter, “Lilith”. Courtesy of the Artist, LGDR, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin, Asia.
Her work is sensual, visceral, complex, and contradictory, often exposing intimacies we all know exist, but haven't really seen an image of before.
Marilyn’s work, which gained popularity in the ’90s, has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the retrospective “Pretty/Dirty,” which appeared at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017. I’ll never forget seeing Marilyn’s video, “Smash” in that retrospective, of those killer shoes fiercely kicking through plates of glass.
Marilyn Minter, “Delta”. Courtesy of the Artist, LGDR, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin, Asia.
Marilyn Minter (born 1948) is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. Minter's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and has been included in group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In 2006, Marilyn Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and installed several billboards in Chelsea, New York City in collaboration with Creative Time. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA from 2010-2011. It was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and on the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. In 2013, Minter was featured in “Riotous Baroque,” an exhibition that originated at the Kunsthaus Zürich and traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2015, Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX. Pretty/Dirty traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Orange Country Museum of Art, and finally the Brooklyn Museum in November 2016. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen.
Follow us: @theartcareer / Emily McElwreath @emilymcelwreath_art
Marilyn Minter: @marilynminter / www.marilynminter.net
Podcast Director: Morgan Everhart @morgan_everhart
Sound editing: Aaron Stoner
Music: Chase Johnson
Tech: Yujin Son
Further links: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/magazine/sex-old-age.html
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